Response Paper

Shawna Powell
My Best Friends Wedding
As stated in Tamar McDonald’s book, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre, romantic comedies are viewed as guilty pleasures. When analyzing a certain genre of movie, like a romantic comedy, there are certain elements that need to be addressed and will offer a proper structure to the film. As I began analyzing one of my favorite romantic comedies, My Best Friends Wedding, deciphering the elements of the genre were much easy to witness with the new found knowledge I have obtained.
In the earlier sentences of the chapter of Romantic Comedies, McDonald states that “(Romantic Comedies) Satisfy because they provide easy, uncomplicated pleasures” (McDonald: 7). When I would watch a movie, I never realized that I enjoyed them immensely because they came with no urge to use my brain cells. As I sat down to watch a classic Julia Roberts movie, I recognized that it fits into that mold; the mold of the generic love story that has been done once, twice, a million times.
The film is centered on Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts), a 27-year-old New York restaurant critic who receives a call from her long-time friend Michael O'Neal .In College, the two made an agreement that if neither of them were married by the time they turned 28, they would marry each other. Three weeks before her 28th birthday, Michael tells her he has fallen in love with and is about to marry a 20-year-old college student from a wealthy family. This causes Julianne to realize she has always been in love with Michael and cannot stand to see him wed another woman.
McDonald further states that another element of a romantic comedy is there will always be visual characteristics. These characteristics are identifiable in most movies and create a symbol for the particular genre. He states that “Consider the reception within the genre of articles associated with weddings, as well as chocolates, candlelight, beds…” (11). Having a movie’s setting placed predominantly around a wedding shows that love and romance is the main plot; it is a subconscious facet that love is saturated in some aspect throughout the entire movie.
One aspect that doesn’t really match up with McDonald theory is “Romantic comedies are boy meets, loses, regains girl” (12). In this particular movie, boy does meet and loose girl, however it is the girl that attempts to regain boy. As stated earlier, the plot revolves Julia Roberts going to profess her undying love to her ex-boyfriend in hopes to break up his wedding. Although it does not fit the perfect mold, there is the same structure just switched sexes at the end.
Everyone wants to have hoped that someday they soon will find true love. Perhaps that is the lure of romantic comedies; they offer the insight and fantasy of finding your soul mate but is it realistic? McDonald says that “In giving the audience a high degree of closure with the happy ending in films of this genre, are romantic comedies benign, supplying an on-screen fantasy of perpetual bliss usually lacking in real life?” (14). One aspect I enjoyed about My Best Friend’s Wedding is the movie did not end up in the usual fairy tale happy ending. When Julia Roberts character finally musters up enough courage to tell Michael how much she wants to be with him, the audience feels like it will end up the “normal” way. However, Michael ends up marrying his 20-something fiancé, leaving Julia Roberts embarrassed and alone; which doesn’t happen normally. I really liked that even though she didn’t end up with her “prince”, she still stood up for what she believed in and she received closure.
Another aspect that needs to be considered is that My Best Friends Wedding is quite radical. The definition of radical romance states that "It is often willing to abandon the empahsis on making sure the couple ends up together, regardless of likelihood, instead striving to interrogate the ideology of romance" (59). The movie applies to this theory because the entire movie is based on Julia Roberts pursuing the man, not the other way around; the generic way movies have been for decades before the radical romance comedies. Another aspect that gives the movie a radical twist is Julia Roberts character does not end up with the man in the end; she ends up dancing with a gay man. Both of those scenarios are extremly radical at this time becasue the 'happily every after' dream does not come true, and homosexuality was not very prevalent during this period.
For the most part romantic comedies are light hearted, and predominantly made for women; however they offer a sense of hope for those looking for love, and give commonality to those who are in love and can relate to the movie. My Best Friends Wedding has most of the aspects that allows it to be placed in the romantic comedy genre; however it also meets the criteria to be a radical romance as well. And who doesn’t love Rupert Evert sing “I’ll Say A Little Pray for You” ?


Works Cited:

Hogan, PJ. My Best Friends Wedding

McDonald, Tamar. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. Wallflower press. London. 2007

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